Józef Jerzy Kukuczka, nicknamed "Jurek", born on March 24, 1948 in Katowice, Poland and died on October 24, 1989 while attempting to climb the south face of Lhotse, is a Polish mountaineer and Himalayan climber.
He is considered one of the greatest Himalayan climbers of all time. He was the second man, after Reinhold Messner, to climb the fourteen peaks over 8,000 meters. An iconic climber of an extraordinary generation of Polish climbers (including Wanda Rutkiewicz, Krzysztof Wielicki, Wojciech Kurtyka, Andrzej Czok, Artur Hajzer, Ryszard Pawłowski etc.) his Himalayan exploits are first-rate: ten new routes out of the fourteen 8,000ers climbed, four winter ascents (including three firsts), a traverse, a solo, several ascents in alpine style. His record is even more impressive if we take into account the fact that Jerzy Kukuczka lived in communist Poland and could not benefit from the advanced training techniques and equipment available to Western climbers.
The Italian mountaineer Walter Bonatti celebrates in his book3 Kukuczka's conquests as epic deeds and underlines the fact that, unlike Reinhold Messner, Kukuczka managed to climb the fourteen 8,000ers always choosing difficult or new routes and with extreme (also economic) conditions.